Flying Finn Bottas seals rising star status

20 Jul 2014 16:46

Valtteri Bottas endorsed his reputation as one of the rising stars in Formula One on Sunday after finishing second at the German Grand Prix.

The 24-year-old Finn drove his Williams with great confidence to claim his third consecutive podium finish for the team as they reeled off their 300th podium in Formula One.

"That was fun -- those last few laps were close with Lewis (Hamilton), but I am really happy that at the end we could keep our car between the two Mercedes," he said afterwards.

"I actually saw his front left in my mirror completely grained and I knew that he would struggle in the last two corners.

"So I tried to pull a bit of a gap there and always get a good exit out of the final corner, Turn One and Turn Two leading onto the back straight. It didn't really matter if he was close to me in the final sector as there is nowhere to overtake so I just would rather focus on the places that matter."

Bottas held off the Mercedes of Hamilton with some style and added that the resurgent Williams team had given him the ideal strategy for the race as he equalled the best result of his career.

He added: "It definitely went to plan -- that was Plan A and it worked well. We knew it would be difficult here for us to make a two-stop and the last few laps of every stint the tyres were really gone.

"Especially the final stint -- with 27 laps on that set of tyres and Lewis behind -- was not easy. But again the communication between me and the engineers was really, really good."

His points haul lifted Williams above Ferrari to third in the constructors' championship.